Taylor Swift - Folklore

Not even a lead single that we all hate? LET’S GO

what??? the name makes me hope it's a step away from the pop of her last few albums which has really had diminishing returns

Folklore

she is such a hack

oh collaborators this time are aaron dessner, justin vernon, william bowery (which is not a name i recognise at all or can find anything about?) and antonoff of course so i'll expect it's indeed folk-y

jesus

isn’t kanye releasing an album tomorrow too?

tracklist:
the 1
cardigan
the last great american dynasty
exile (feat. bon iver)
my tears ricochet
mirrorball
seven
august
this is me trying
illicit affairs
invisible string
mad woman
epiphany
betty
peace
hoax

bonus track:
the lakes

Rodrigo Prieto, who’s helped out on the last few Scorsese movies, is the cinematographer for the “cardigan” video - is she about to put out a good music video for once???

(I mean, he’s also worked with Iñárritu but let’s not dwell on that)

the look what you made me do video was good!

the last great american dynasty

even she watched the jordan doc

omg this sounds kind of awful but will probs be amazing

This is the concept I've wanted from her since forever. Can it live up to my expectations? At least it's a good idea to just let it all out without the usual bluster of a pre-release hype campaign. That's refreshing

Missed opportunity for a Myrkur collaboration IMO but I guess she didn't want the whole 'Aryan goddess' thing to bubble up again.

It’s a concept album about sacrificing Varg.

i’m overwhelmed

pic.twitter.com/w2hhXfRi0M

— Aaron Dessner (@aaron_dessner) July 23, 2020

an entire brand new album of songs I’ve poured all of my whims, dreams, fears, and musings into.

Would be funny if they were all songs about unicorns, eating babies, not studying for the test, Trump, teeth falling out and what if giraffes could speak.

Seriously, though, I'm really intrigued by the notion of Swift working fast and spontaneously and foregoing the pop polish/pressures.

Can anyone recommend some good folk/folk-esque albums released this year?

Bonny Light Horseman for sure

lol this is BREAKING NEWS on p4k, writ large on a red banner.

xp thanks.

an entire brand new album of songs I’ve poured all of my whims, dreams, fears, and musings into.

so this is all her rejected Cats songs, then

And extra special thanks to my amazing manager and as always to heroic Wuotan who oversees Valhalla and shall lead us to glory

i’m so happy

lol I forgot she was in Cats. I forgot there was a Cats!

if you had seen cats you would not forget there was a cats

no lies detected

Can anyone recommend some good folk/folk-esque albums released this year?

Not exactly under the radar but Owen Pallet, Blake Mills & Phoebe Bridgers albums?

the new Fabiano do Nascimento is good

I guess those are folk-esque, yeah (I’ve heard the Pallett and Bridgers, liked ‘em both).

xp

There's a new Gillian Welch.

I know she is not like this at all but my first reaction to the title "Folklore" was "oh cool, she's going full-Varg"

hahahaha I see Ned got there first

Damn it, now I actually want a Taylor Swift folk-metal album.

Taylor Swift Presents: The Prussian Blue Songbook

"When you can tour again, what will it be like?"

"Ritualistic."

"Here's the world premiere of the new Taylor Swift single, 'Solstice Blindfold'"

Leaked first single:

https://youtu.be/AcAl4Fr2qQU

But I got smarter, built an altar in the nick of time
Honey, I summoned up the dead, I do it all the time
I've got a list of souls and yours is in red, sacrificed
Chop your neck once, then I chop it twice, oh!

Look who you made me kill.

now set it to an Antonoff beat.

the art made me think of this so hopefully that's her new direction

Goole on Twitter is monitoring this for the "if you sing about forests you are straight up racist" rule, he recorded expressed concern over the song "The Lakes" which could be seen as forest fash adjacent

pity forests and lakes, they didn't ask for this

Anyway this is all reminding me what I think of the National, which is a big blank space upon which I have not projected any thoughts.

That’s exactly what they want you to think.

"I am a big blank space / upon which I have not / projected any thoughts" is one of my favorite National lyrics

I'm glad to know I can score some extra coin this way.

very funny to me this is prob her best album art ever

anyway i bought a copy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDkLfpyqbm0

Wow, this fan-soaking is so Garth-level I'm expecting her to roll out SwifTunes in 2021. https://t.co/34b6x1hlWq

— Keith Harris (@useful_noise) July 23, 2020

fan-soaking

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVftr8XUEAEIcnT?format=jpg&name=medium

Wow, this fan-soaking is so Garth-level I'm expecting her to roll out SwifTunes in 2021.

What?

welcome back, Aja

Keith was Ajakitty??

Taylor was.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0798/9273/products/vs_louise_front_2048x2048.png?v=1437941174

that Dessner note makes me even more excited about this, and i was already pretty excited.

the 8 different vinyl covers and 8 different CD covers is ridiculous, though. i feel bad for obsessives who feel like they have to buy them all.

i mean they can spend their money however they want, but still

now THAT'S how you rig the Billboard 200 chart, LOL (paging Dyl)

are they shipping immediately? they have to if it's to game the charts with the recent rule changes

the lps won't be shipping for 16 weeks

cds go out in a month iirc

There were 4 Deluxe Editions of Lover; each one had a different set of er.. diary entries.

it's not really like taylor needs to game the charts anyway i guess

I was in a Target last night, and they still had a ton of Deluxe copies of Lover.

Yeah, I’m just kidding around (this topic was discussed in the rolling pop thread recently)

That album art is very Midsommar

currently imagining the alternate universe where Taylor sticks it to the big streaming services she's tangled with in the past and made the album a Bandcamp exclusive for a week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-a8s8OLBSE

oh my god OH MY GOD

starting this. you can sure hear the Dessnerness of it all right away.

completely fucking blown away by "the 1"

this is it!!!!!!

"cardigan" is an exact Swift/LDR synthesis (the vocal phrasing!) and I like it

my brain went straight to tori

which i guess automatically makes it her best ldr synthesis

when
you
are
young
they
assume
you
know
nothing

Such an amazing song

Also lol @ "the wedding was charming if a little gauche"

wow the bridge in "exile" is great

and then it comes back again!

So she broke up with Joe, huh?

Kinda her mid/late 90s lingering-impact-of-trip-hop album to a degree, isn't it? (This is very much not a complaint.) Also given the recent Hit Parade episode on Lilith Fair I'm feeling a hair of McLachlan from around then too, and similarly not a complaint.

Listening to "The Last Great American Dynasty," and it's easy to imagine Matt Berninger singing the chorus.

"mirrorball" is soooo pretty

"A marvelous time ruining everything" is a great line that hits harder via the repetition and variation.

“august” is a cocteau twins song and it made me cry

this is the best taylor swift album and i’m not even done yet

I don't think what the Dessners and co. bring to the table really works for me tbh

yeah "august" is so much

Per jaymc, great thread re "Last Great American Dynasty"

obsessed with Taylor’s song about Watch Hill House and Rebekah Harkness.....yes queen give us a WASP history lesson, be the John Cheever you want you see in the world!!!!!!

— rachel syme (@rachsyme) July 24, 2020

It sounds very nice, but it's also hella mellow; seven tracks in, hope it picks up a bit.

(also - I'm hesitant to type this - but in "Mirrorball," when she starts to sing "You'll find me on my tallest tiptoes," it totally sounds like she's about to sing "You'll find me on my toilet...")

"Betty" is the best-sounding thing on here, figures it's the only Dessner-Antonoff-Swift co-production

I thought that too.
Which makes me wonder if its gonna be a another "lonely starbucks lovers" thing.

mellow is the dominant mood. the songcraft is out of this fucking world though

and i haven't been studying the lyrics intently but... she seems in top form here

I'm enjoying the mellowness. She's been on such a maximalist kick for so long. (Not that maximalism is absent here, it's just a gauzier variety.) I've always been a fan of mid-tempo and ballad Taylor.

(only halfway through the album but feels likely to be my favorite of hers since Red.)

Damn, she DID write a folk-metal album -- from "Invisible String"

"Cold was the steel of my ax to grind for the boys who broke my heart / Now I send their babies presents"

every melody is somehow lovelier than the last

My biggest objection to her dance-pop stuff is it tends to be too rigid to let her unfurl those long melody lines. Which she's really good at.

she keeps some of the clipped-pop delivery here but it sure works

lol at "betty" being about being in love with a girl but she makes sure there's one line that makes it clear she's playing a male role to make it straight

so none of this is gonna be played on the radio huh

seven is lovely.

"Cardigan" is being promoted to radio.

overall this is quite good, probably a few tracks longer than it needed to be but that's my only complaint

Trixie Mattel will cover "Betty" by Monday.

That modulation at the end of Betty is just *chef's kiss*.

i want a whole album of "august"s

I haven’t listened to Bon Iver since Skinny Love and that EP, does he always sound like this

no, it's rare to hear him in that lower register

"what if you just sang it in a normal voice, like a regular singer, Justin?"

— Keith Harris (@useful_noise) July 24, 2020

lol at "betty" being about being in love with a girl but she makes sure there's one line that makes it clear she's playing a male role to make it straight

well - the other characters have names, why not the narrator ("James")? it doesn't feel forced to me

piano on Cardigan is very 'Norman Fucking Rockwell'.

Cardigan is her best single since Blank Space.

it was just funny because when i first heard it i thought she'd written a gay song until the one line where she no homos it by revealing the narrator's name

'james' never made anyone less gay

Was Taylor referring to the National when she sang about that indie band in We Are Never etc

Lol if so that would be the ultimate slow burn revenge on Jake Gyllenhaal

On about the 4th time through August I realized the opening reminds me of "Life in a Northern Town." (A good thing.)

Was Taylor referring to the National when she sang about that indie band in We Are Never etc

― self-clowning oven (Murgatroid), Thursday, July 23, 2020 11:13 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

unfortunately it was best coast

cardigan is good but there are several tracks even better here imo! But it's not an album of singles that will take off so whatever.

Definitely some of her best melody lines ever here and they're allowed space to breathe

Holy shit @ "Illicit Affairs"

I think this is the best Swift album ever and I'm still only at August on my first play

still on my first time through and have been knocked for 6 a few times, most recently on "invisible string"

"August" has a very specific vibe I'm having trouble placing. The Sundays? Sixpence None the Richer?

On about the 4th time through August I realized the opening reminds me of "Life in a Northern Town." (A good thing.)

I also hear a bit of 'Back for Good' by Take That in it. The "I can see..." bit reminds me of "whatever I said, whatever I did".

re "August", it's very "Here's Where The Story Ends" or "Homeward" from The Sundays, but the chorus also has overtones of 90s Cocteau Twins.

Re « August » the « I can see » part reminds me of... « I’m Gonna Be (500 miles) » !

when brad compared it to cocteau twins i heard it immediately, the shimmering guitar + drum machine + the "i can see us lost in the memory..." melody

"Seven" is very Sufjan

with rapping

(also - I'm hesitant to type this - but in "Mirrorball," when she starts to sing "You'll find me on my tallest tiptoes," it totally sounds like she's about to sing "You'll find me on my toilet...")

cosigning this

Funnier later in the chorus (?) where it sounds like she’s saying “...but I’m still on my toilet.”

re "August", it's very "Here's Where The Story Ends" or "Homeward" from The Sundays, but the chorus also has overtones of 90s Cocteau Twins.

― Tim F, Friday, July 24, 2020

A helluva thing to read first thing

I love this album
I think it reflects both the best of Taylor's writing and also of The National folks' production
I feel like my fandom for both respective artists is justified
I hope Matt Berninger is having a good day

don’t know if anyone’s talked about “peace” yet, but...wow, “peace”

I like the pastoral home-movie clips that accompany each track on the Spotify phone app. They help to set the mood.

Peace was the one that set me off, tears forming in my eyes. What a great album

so "The Last American Dynasty" is her less starstruck "Starlight" crossed with "Showbiz Kids," no?

God, yes, me too on "Peace" - that one really stopped me in my tracks, a heart-stopping tear-jerker.

xp last american dynasty immediately reminded me of starlight yeah

This might be the first Swift album I'm excited to hear, but I'm also curious to see if it passes the teen test. That is, will my actual bonafide teen girls like and listen to it. My older one never really got into the last couple of Swift albums, but my younger one really liked the last one, I think partly based on how much she liked the documentary.

um "Cardigan" is really really beautiful

xp Josh in Chicago does Dark Souls pass the teen test?

I also bought one right of the bat at midnight. Turns out I purchased the non-explicit one, how the f**k was I supposed to know this would be the first TS release with profanities in in the middle of this whole frenzy and chaos.

I'm loving it, surely up to the standards of Lover, not sure yet if it surpasses it. I like the understatement of "conventional" Taylor, her subtleties and nuances hidden in plain sight. I'm afraid media will spin the "artistic statement" side of this to the point of exhaustion but in the long run this will pass, the songs will remain and it'll still be great.

For the time being, Speak Now > Lover/folklore > Red > Fearless > 1989 > rep > TS

hearing her swear is funny imo

I'm liking this a lot already. What's the term people use? "Tryhard?" So far this sounds much less try hard than her last few, imo. Just more relaxed, really pushing her strengths to the fore, perfect summer melancholia. Or at least perfect for *this* summer.

Older teen thinks it's really pretty so far, which it is. Younger teen was already listening to it, too, and her first take was "I like it, it's a lot more like her older stuff, before she went pop star."

Dark Souls does not pass the teen girl test, but that game was a great way to get them out of the room.

'this is me trying' is the most beautiful song ever.

No. "Cardigan" is.

I haven't listened to the album; I have only listened to/watched the video for "Cardigan." Does it sound like an LDR song to anyone else?

yes

for some reason LDR can hold my attention for an hour of dirges where Taylor can't, tho

This seems much less dirgy than LDR to me.

"Cardigan" is a little more revved-up than LDR, but the structure/rhyme scheme feels similar to me, and it almost sounds like Swift is singing in a slightly lower register than usual, but that may be my relative ignorance of her catalog talking.

re "August", it's very "Here's Where The Story Ends" or "Homeward" from The Sundays, but the chorus also has overtones of 90s Cocteau Twins.

sounds like she's been listening to Hatchie...

for some reason LDR can hold my attention for an hour of dirges where Taylor can't, tho

― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.), Friday, July 24, 2020 6:45 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

you're playing yourself here

if I knew how to play anyone else I would!

take it to the gay thread, sailor

i don't really hear ldr but maybe that's because the piano parts on this are soooo national-y (for the obvious reason) so that's all i can think about

again, i understand that taylor is obsessed with ldr, but my mind immediately skips to references beyond her e.g. ... tori, "seven" even manages to have a kind of sarah mclachlan feel. feel like ldr would never make a record this lilith fair imo. which is not me dissing ldr but is def me praising this album

also to ufo's point, some of these songs would sound exactly like national songs with berninger singing over them. taylor manages to take them somewhere else though

ldr would never make a record this lilith fair

dangerous to say this so close to her long-dreaded spoken word release

I've never heard the National or Tori Amos. So I'll trust Brad on those affinities.

Brad otm there. A lot of these songs, you can totally hear the National, but listening to Swift sing then really underscores what she brings to the table. And Berninger, too, respectively.

rather spookily this and I am Easy to Find are both 16 tracks and almost exactly the same length

I don't hear LDR much; there's a lightness of being with which TS is imbued even at her most introspective.

not a band i'd compare the sound of the record to at all, but the verses of "the 1" are *very* the 1975

lol i hear it

I had this dream you're doing cool shit
Having adventures on your own
You meet some woman on the internet and take her home

the lyrics on this record are so fucking GOOD which is another reason i can't compare it to ldr

their lyrical approaches have almost nothing in common but I'll stop myself there lol

sorry 4 giving in to the irresistible diss simon

if I was going to get upset I wouldn't love utterly dissable artists

I know I'm obsessed with The 1975, but the beginning of 'mirrorball' is almost exactly the same as The 1975's 'medicine'.

I want you to know
I'm a mirrorball
I can change everything about me to fit in
You are not like the regulars
The masquerade revelers
Drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten

fuckin slaps!!!!

The overall mood definitely feels Lilith Fair without sounding a lot like anyone in particular, tho the piano production does evoke Sarah Mclachlan (more than Tori, I think, whose piano attack is sharper). Also obviously all the '70s women-piano-pop that Lilith Fair itself evoked, Carole King and Carly Simon etc.

And agreed about the lyrics. One of my FB friends just complimented the gauche/goes slant rhyme. I've always liked the craftsman side of Taylor, the obvious pleasure she gets in putting things together just the way she wants them.

lovely, mature album with especially vivid lyrics for swift. generally liked the Antonoff tracks more than the Dessner ones (and I'm a National fan, though more in the 00s than the 10s). early favorites are "Mirrorball" and "Epiphany" - both have really gauzy, light production that elevate swift in a way that feels like new territory for her, though maybe bits of 1989 sounded like this?

Hmm, I typically can't stand Swift's music but I may check this out based on the Sarah McLachlan comparisons.

"mirrorball" is like a more self-aware "enchanted," like it has all the same totally-gone falling-for-someone swoonings but it's also like "what am i doing, am i losing myself in trying so hard to appeal to this person and reflect their interests?"

though maybe bits of 1989 sounded like this?

― Indexed, Friday, July 24, 2020 7:46 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was expecting this record to sound like "safe & sound" but, surprisingly, "this love" seems to be the actual touchstone

I was gonna say "Clean," but yeah.

it can be both!!!!

every time i look up the lyrics to one of these songs i see a line or a verse that kicks my ass. all of "seven" is amazing, the second verse is i think trying to portray a greater adult darkness as viewed from the eyes of a child, cf. "i think your house is haunted / your dad is always mad and that must be why / and i think you should come live with me / and we can be pirates / then you won't have to cry," which is staggering on its *own*, and then the bridge is

please picture me in the weeds
before i learned civility
i used to scream ferociously
any time i wanted

fuck

Kinda sad about matty because he had come up with the "taylor nebraska" whole thing in an interview and how he would be glad to produce it and now this thing comes up and that box has obviously been ticked now.

"This love" was great

the lyrics of "this is me trying" are very reputation-y (cf. how "adjusting" rhymes with "rusting") but i really love "i was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere / fell behind all my classmates and i ended up here"

ha -- I noted that line/image too.

and i love pretty much every line in "illicit affairs," i think it's just great writing. "what started in beautiful rooms / ends with meetings in parking lots"; "take the words for what they are / a dwindling, mercurial high / a drug that only worked / the first few hundred times"; "and you wanna scream 'don't call me kid, don't call me baby' / look at this godforsaken mess that you made me"

Do any of you know if she is a reader, or if she's ever recommended or mentioned any books she's reading? I'd be curious.

It's obvious her sense of metaphor has expanded in the last decade, which means she no doubt reads or is at least sponging from the right sources.

I think a key thing I like about this album was that it *isn't* a "Taylor Nebraska" thing, or rather, that what I kinda figured might be the case -- some sort of vocal/guitar only thing -- wasn't. (And I know that while his pseudo-Walden days were long ago, the announced presence of Bon Iver also had me wondering.) As I muttered I really don't think about the National at all so if this is what they sound like then I'm perfectly content to listen to this rather than them, honestly. Alfred's point about Taylor's 'lightness of being' strikes me, and could also possibly explain why I'd find this much more interesting a prospect all around than the National straight up or LDR, the truest of blank zones. But to get back to the sense of sound beyond all these other points raised -- it's not a 'return' to a past so much as a comfortable shift, one which underscores the argument I've had (in my head only, maybe) for years that 'roots music' is a fetishized and misunderstood concept, given that our collective memories shift more and more to a point where it's been electronically mediated and supported as much as 'really' played by someone.

xxp She's a fan of Sally Rooney, which makes sense:
https://lithub.com/sally-rooney-is-trending-again-and-this-time-its-because-of-taylor-swift/

Yeah the Rooney connection makes sense. They're both very good at taking stock situations -- boy-girl, misunderstanding, mixed feelings, etc. -- and peeling back clichés to get to the underlying messiness.

I am surprised by how much I'm enjoying this album

And speaking of her metaphors, I was just appreciating this one: "You're a flashback in a film reel on the one screen in my town."

You get this sense of her really working to get to the specifics of the feeling.

t's not a 'return' to a past so much as a comfortable shift, one which underscores the argument I've had (in my head only, maybe) for years that 'roots music' is a fetishized and misunderstood concept, given that our collective memories shift more and more to a point where it's been electronically mediated and supported as much as 'really' played by someone.

This is a great point.

If anything, this album reminds me aesthetically -- not sonically -- of something like Blood on the Tracks, on which a decade of rummaging for cool sounds to complement the increasingly sophisticated songwriting strengthens a suite of ostensibly acoustic tunes. Think also of Tunnel of Love or Sleater-Kinney's No Cities to Love.

a comfortable shift

Yeah, Ned, this that you wrote jumped out at me, too. She adapts so well to this shift it doesn't even sound like an adaptation.

Thanks to you both -- your comparisons there, Alfred, are striking.

Yes to the "This Love" comparison

didn't read this thread but this is a good album, the first one I've liked since 1989 (ok I never really gave the last one a shot)

This is reminding me a lot of the second half of Rilo Kiley's More Adventurous, right down to the unwelcome vocals of a guy on a solitary track

So is there an actual Varg connection or…?

similar love of knitwear?

me after I’ve left the neon lights of the city behind to get back to the land and listen to Folklore, but there’s some part of me that just can’t let go of who I used to be pic.twitter.com/nxzWsgRP0e

— Sam Lansky (@samlansky) July 24, 2020

Do any of you know if she is a reader, or if she's ever recommended or mentioned any books she's reading? I'd be curious.

Still see this poster hanging in public libraries:

https://www.walden.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/taylor-swift-768-1.jpg

can someone shop White Fragility in there

Women like hunting witches too
Doing your dirtiest work for you too

tbh She's in the movie version of "The Giver," so there's a bit of what's good for the goose in there. And to go full tin-hat, that was at the end of the promotional cycle for "Red," and seeing her in a bright red dress with bright red lipstick next to the word "READ" kills a few more birds with one stone too. She's a clever one, that Taylor Swift.

i cannOT stop crying to "mirrorball"

think a key thing I like about this album was that it *isn't* a "Taylor Nebraska" thing

Yeah, it's not really a Taylor Nebraska! But it checks all the marks Healy seemed to suggest when he mentioned the concept.

I'd be interested in seeing more of those pop star library posters. I know the one with Bowie is totally classic.

I had the R.E.M. one for a while:

https://www.hakes.com/Image/MediumRes/96585/1/image.jpg

(mine was not signed, it was taped slightly askew on my door room wall)

xp I remember seeing that Healy comment at the time and thinking, "You can't really produce a Nebraska for someone else; if you want Taylor to make a Nebraska you'll just have to find some way to lock her in her house for a year with a guitar and a harmonica."

Just ordered the vinyl and they were like "this ships in 16 fucking weeks", which is kinda perfect because although yes, this is a melancholy summer album, it will slot in really nicely with my fall and winter and winter favorites as well.

just saw a headline declaring this "the perfect quar album," and now I have a new abbreviation to loathe

idk I think it's kinda cool

weren't Quar the worst band of all time at one point

This Taylort Earth

'fraid of the 'rona, gotta quar

james is totally a girl btw

pretty good album but man, it's kind of a bummer, isn't it? like i'm trying to get ready for the weekend and now i'm kind of sad.

Yeah - it's both very good, and not the kind of territory that I think I will want to revisit too often.

(btw - the vocal melody at the beginning of "Seven" reminds me of Big Thief's "Cattails.")

It's not outright depressing, it's more like sweetly melancholic, which of course makes it even worse.

I hadn't looked up which tracks Antonoff worked on, but when that final section of "August" hits - like, he may as well have signed it in Sharpie.

xp: I listened to it twice this morning and it inspired me to listen to more sad albums. So I reached for Get Lonely and this is kinda a rough way to usher in the weekend.

Definitely overshot my target.

Once you get deep into the stretch starting with Track 9, it feels like any sense of momentum has been lost.

idk "invisible string" is track 11, it's pretty buoyant

but also it's a sustained mood, the momentum is by nature unhurried throughout, patient and observational in a way that a late injection of energy would absolutely undermine

the sequencing makes me feel like i'm wandering through some feverish cloudy interzone that connects all the regions of these songs, her best sequencing ever incidentally

I do like "Invisible String" a lot. But the 2nd half of the album hits me as a bunch of slow, pretty songs strung together, without enough variation; maybe I'm just not in the right headspace for that mood.

(or it worked better on a Thursday night than a Friday morning)

"it's obvious that wanting me dead has really brought you two together" - lyric of the decade

i get it, part of me keeps starting the record over again after i hit "august," mostly because i want to hear "the 1" all the time. but i really value how much of this album takes place in a unified sonic world because hybrid-country-pop and post-country taylor swift only made one other album like that and it's reputation xp

long suite of slow atmospheric songs is a feature it shares with the last national record too so it's possible i prepared myself for this by falling really hard for i am easy to find. but though they're the same length taylor's record feels shorter

Sounds like this is her Sea Change.

oh dear lord no

The last National album is the only one in their storied catalog I loved, in part because of crucial female support.

i'm enjoying this v much. if i was going thru a breakup this album would be a real kick in the nuts

So apparently “Cardigan”, “August” and “Betty” are all about the same situation from the different perspectives of the people involved?

That's what I learned from Wilson and Rosen's reviews

So, how many sleeves did Led Zeppelin have for "In through the out door"?

gonna listen to this now and record my feelings here rather than that 'dis hyped' thread

to this end i am only going to record positive feelings

One more "sounds-like" note – that poster of R.E.M. c. 1990 was serendipitous, as the orchestral stretch of "August" from around 3:30 - 3:45 has a few totally Out of Time touches.

At the very beginning of March, Justin Vernon and I had gone to Texas to work on the new Big Red Machine album. I had been living with my family in France as COVID was starting to spiral out of control in Europe. I said to my wife that maybe they should come back to the States with me because I was worried about getting separated. So we got tickets, and my kids and wife flew to [the family’s home in] Upstate New York and I flew to Texas. I was there for a week, and by the time I got back Upstate, the borders were being shut and we got stuck. I have the Long Pond studio here, so in a way it was lucky.

I hunkered down here and started to write a ton of music—more than I ever have. I thought maybe they were National or Big Red Machine ideas or maybe something totally different. Things were happening.

So when (Taylor) reached out, I had this large folder of ideas that were pretty well on their way. She was very clear that she didn’t want me to edit any of my ideas; she wanted to hear everything that was interesting to me at this moment, including really odd, experimental noise. So I made a folder of stuff, including some pretty out-there sketches. A few hours later, she sent “Cardigan,” fully written in a voice memo. That’s when I realized that this was unusual—just the focus and clarity of her ideas. It was pretty astonishing. Over the next couple months, this would just happen; all of a sudden, I’d get a voice memo. And then another. Eventually, it was so inspiring that I wrote more ideas that were specifically in response to what she was writing.

https://pitchfork.com/news/the-nationals-aaron-dessner-talks-taylor-swifts-new-album-folklore/

is it positive to say that my problems with this so far aren't really to do with swift herself so much as her producers

that is v much my feeling as well fwiw

That's funny, her past few albums I blamed the producers for bringing out the stuff I liked least about Swift herself.

Lover was kind of engagingly knockabout at least imo!

literally do not understand anyone's issues with the production

unless they're bored

i am already pre-annoyed from the rym discussion tho

The guitar in “The Last Great American Dynasty” is so beautiful.

I can't think offhand of a time someone upped their game by getting The National or Bon Iver involved. certainly it didn't improve Kathleen Edwards or Sharon van Etten's tunes, just made them more pointlessly "atmospheric" to their detriment

that said if she stays pals with Vernon I hope he passes on BJ Burton's deets at some point

I said to Brad to that i hope the Vernon link leads to some work with Jenn Wasner.

yeah don't let these boring men write your music, listen to your critic friends and recruit weyes blood lol

re: other folk from this year
I loved the Christian Lee Hutson record (produced by Phoebe Bridgers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lg1-xTV4xk

this gonna be rep stans listening to folklore pic.twitter.com/9jbFxLwuJQ

— george (@ursogeorgeous) July 23, 2020

also if you're going to do a big major-label melodramatic response to strange times then do it like The 1975 imo: crazed, desperate, ambitious, bursting with nonsense and barely logical. when is taytay gonna lose it properly i ask? when will she release her 'piece of me'? (no, 'look what you made me do' was not it)

this album feels safe, just in a way we haven't really seen from her before, and i think the fault is this studied, my-first-echoey-sad-indie production

positivity! 'august' is actually p good. 'this is me trying' is also decent. i think in future i will listen to this album from track 8 onward haha

The 1975 album is pretty much a logical extension of their previous work though? The extra fragmented-ness is just a question of degree.

i have actually really rather liked it from 'august' onward, 'invisible string' probably best track so far, absolutely no accounting for why

u horrible lot will say it took me 8 tracks to acclimatise but i genuinely think the melodies & sonics have got better

Leaving aside the inevitable critical framing, this album doesn’t feel like it’s even trying to be bold or dangerous or risky except from a “what does this mean career wise” perspective (and even then it could easily be framed as a pandemic one-off), and if that’s specifically what a listener is hoping for from Taylor then I suspect they will be disappointed.

In this regard, the point of comparison I keep coming back to is Tori Amos’s ‘Scarlet’s Walk’ - another superficially “safe” album where the ‘sharper’ piano attack referred to above softened but also the lyrical approach became less elliptical and more attuned to working up and examining the crevices of recognisable metaphors. But even more than that, the opening up of the viewpoints so that the songs feel part of a dialogue with (sometimes heard, sometimes unheard) other voices and viewpoints. They’re coming to the same space from opposite directions but the end result - songs bursting with specific imagery and detail but relatively straightforward to unpack lyrically, because they’re part of conversations - feels very similar.

Feel a strong simpatico between these songs and stuff like “Amber Waves”, “A Sorta Fairytale”, “Strange”, “Your Cloud” etc.

my crackpot theory about this album: frontloaded the more 'immediate' stuff, kept the slower, sadder stuff for later, but actually, the slower sadder stuff was more interesting (to me at least), if we're getting sad taylor i want truly-desolate taylor, not sad-indie taylor

lol sorry to ride roughshod over your much-more-thoughtful and probably accurate theory tho tim

Happy to hear an album from her that isn’t suited for stadiums/choreography — which is why Alfred’s Tunnel of Love comparison fits so well. An artist who plays Wembley not writing for Wembley.

cardigan sounds awfully Lana Del Rey-ish.

But, like, good.

brb gonna find a support group for ppl who strongly disliked the first 7 tracks and rly quite liked the last 9, this is too weird

So AOTY ?

yes i am sure we are all agreed this is aoty

"peace" is sick as hell isn't it lj

Poll it this fall vs. Fetch The Bolt Cutters.

yeah i was surprised 'peace' was rated so low on rym, it makes good use of that weird little alarm tone

second half of this album's production moves away from bon iver and towards...foxing? thinking aloud here haha

Foxing do seem destined for pop star collaborator status

maybe it just made me want to hear 'nearer my god' again haha, now there's an album we can all agree on. yeah christ they NEED to work with some stars

Uh

Jessie Ware recorded the album of the year

This isn on par with Lover and just as overstuffed. I love the songs I love, but I just can't with Long Albums anymore .

so based on that clip up there - and perhaps there are exceptions - but it sounds like he made tracks and she wrote melodies and lyrics to those tracks? am i reading that wrong?

this album is really good and a bit boring and too long. if it were 11 tracks instead of 16, the boring part would fade away.

but it sounds like he made tracks and she wrote melodies and lyrics to those tracks

yes she's been writing this way with producers since 1989

I wonder how much that process has then influenced the overall output of her last few albums, including her lyrical approach.

I mean, if someone gives you the bones of the arrangement for “I Forgot That You Existed” or “You Need To Calm Down”, you’re hardly going to turn that into a “Cardigan” or “Epiphany” lyrically.

So in that sense, Taylor’s output may well be strongly contingent on her collaborators, but not in the way people traditionally mean: rather, because her own creative process seems to strongly involve following the lines of possibility afforded by the material she gets from them.

i do tire of dessner's approach a little by the end of this, but i have that same problem with nearly every national album (except i am easy to find but that's still longer than it needed to be)

there's nothing even close to a bad track though which is the first in a long time for her. so much better than lover for that alone

she had production credits on all of lover so i'd assume she was more involved in the arrangements on that than with the dessner tracks on this & her past martin/shellback collaborations

wish he'd aaron lessner am I right

so based on that clip up there - and perhaps there are exceptions - but it sounds like he made tracks and she wrote melodies and lyrics to those tracks? am i reading that wrong?

worth noting that this is an overwhelmingly common arrangement

"betty" is the track that's closest to being from her nebraska and i would love a whole album of it

xpost I know. Wasn't saying it isn't.

anyway, it must be totally wild to send off a folder of tracks to Taylor Swift and then weeks later they start coming back with a bunch of words and melodies you never could've expected.

not to mention sending off a folder of things you think of as yours and then when they come back, they're really no longer yours ... they are now Taylor Swift songs. I mean, I know he has collaborated with many people, but in most cases his name makes the headline.

This album sent me back to Lover, which I haven't listened to in a long time, and is sounding really good.

xpost None of this feels much like Nebraska to me at all, but if I had to choose the song that comes closest, it would probably be Seven. This dark story told from the perspective of a child who doesn't understand what she's seeing - seems like new ground for Taylor and I like it. The rest of this seems lyrically like pretty generic TSwift to me. Seven, Illicit Affairs, Invisible String, August and Peace are songs I'll probably listen to again, but to me it feels like a step back from Lover. There's nothing on here that grabs me the way The Archer did.

My problem with Betty and August and Cardigan - the whole high school trio - is that I find Taylor Swift's version of high school really boring. Like a Sarah Dessen YA novel. I really don't care whether Betty and James get back together or not; they'll both be fine, and they'll break up next year when they go to college anyway.

I have never thought the subject matter per se of Taylor’s songs was particularly interesting - the topics are primarily useful as a framework for her to stretch herself as a songwriter and performer.

Like, nothing about the relationship story in “All Too Well” is interesting except what the songwriting details (e.g. the Chekhov’s gun device) and the execution/delivery bring to the table.

Which is not to say that “Seven” isn’t a stretch for Taylor - but less, I think, because of the story it tells than because that story then demands a different approach to the storytelling given the narrator’s position necessitates a very specific and oblique approach to the subject matter.

the high school trio is made far more interesting by the queer reading, which i absolutely buy into now

Also re album of the year Beyoncé hasn’t done her Afro-futurist thing yet so I will wait for that

"Cold was the steel of my ax to grind for the boys who broke my heart / Now I send their babies presents"
― Ned Raggett

this line is so good, and also the followup:

"Gold was the color of the leaves when I showed you around Centennial Park / Hell was the journey but it brought me heaven"

Feeling this on a rainy pandemic day.

This album is just insanely good

Also anyone who is feeling this should join Brad and I in enjoying the last three Vanessa Carlton albums

lol assuming they are at all similar to this, the last thing I want tbh is three more albums of this right now.

My tears ricochet <3

Btw, an interesting side-discussion I think worth having is the very idea of releasing an album into the void right now. I'm not as up on pop stuff as some/many of you, but I could have sworn a few months ago people were calling the Dua Lipa album basically the smash hit album of the summer by default. Since then there have been some heavy-hitters (critical and/or popular) that have been releasing to wildly varying degrees of success, afaict. There was the Jessie Ware, which is awesome but I don't think she's a household name, at least not in the States. But then there's the Gaga, who *is*, but whose album as far as I can tell missed the landing pad entirely and splashed down in the water. Then there's the Chicks, whose album arrived with some moderate degree of fanfare but who (again, strictly anecdotally) seemed to have made only a modest impression. But this Swift album, which arrived with *no* fanfare, clearly caught everyone's attention in addition to catching them by surprise.

Anyway, there's a good chance none of these acts will be able to tour behind any of these albums any time soon, maybe not for another year at least, and certainly outside of the bounds of the usual promotional cycle, which makes me wonder how long they'll last in everyone's minds after being launched into said void. Does the usual promotional cycle even matter any more? Is it better to release an album now or delay indefinitely? In the case of Swift's album, as I understand it it was written and recorded during the pandemic, which sets it apart from those other albums. Does/did that make a difference? It's a great record regardless, but was she also just really good at reading the room? I wonder if there are a lot of other artists right now weighing their options. Do we wait it out indefinitely or just take the plunge and do something now? Especially with touring (and therefore their most prominent revenue stream) turned off, it's tantamount to just throwing money in a wishing well and seeing what will happen. Billy Eilish is readying something else, right? But I wonder what else this weird year has in store.

Woke up with "This Is Me Trying" in my head and now want an entire Taylor Swift darkwave album.

There was the Jessie Ware, which is awesome but I don't think she's a household name, at least not in the States. But then there's the Gaga, who *is*, but whose album as far as I can tell missed the landing pad entirely and splashed down in the water.

"Rain on Me" and "Stupid Love" are radio hits, album debuted at #1. I still hear the hits.

i've only listened to "cardigan" so far but i'm really glad to see that she's released an album that's not geared in some way for radio. the white stations she's meant to cater to in particular have largely given up on introducing its audience to new music, but she of all people does not need them. artistically, this move also lets her play to her strengths -- i agree with those who've suggested that her high-octane pop material often lacks the flexibility to let her really do her thing lyrically.

'this is me trying' is the most beautiful song ever.

― Nourry, Friday, July 24, 2020 3:35 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I just got that funny feeling in my stomach listening to it, like when something is beautiful that it moves you physically. this album is incredible.

the broader 'teen test' of course is the streaming charts, and for the moment this album seems to be doing significantly better than lover was doing at this point. it's even doing major damage on apple music, a service that serves a pretty rap-centric audience.

anyway the numerous comparisons to "this love" upthread have me hopeful, will def give it a full listen soon

the devil's in the details but you got a friend in meee

My anecdotal "hit" standard is whether I hear something if I seek it out or not. Dua Lipa, for example, I hear a lot. From my kids and from other places. But Lady Gaga, had I not known she had a new album out I would not have known if she had a new album out.

Do they not play #1 singles in America then?

Maybe I hear the wrong radio? Fewer cars driving by?

^ it sounds too absurd to be real, but yes, legitimately a good number of #1 hits in the us this year will ultimately fail to find a home at radio. this is partly because pop radio is being historically slow to accept new hits but also because of the recent frequency of efforts to hype the charts, which prompted rule changes at billboard that will go into effect soon but have not yet. (and yes, i'd say it's clear that tay's 16 exclusive deluxe physicals is an obvious chart-hyping strategy that i doubt they'd be going forward with if the new rules had already gone into effect, but it's not like she needs it to make a splashy debut.)

re: gaga on american radio lately: it's not just you. "stupid love" was briefly accepted pretty widely at radio, but it ran out of steam fast in the sales-and-streams department and it was ultimately dropped from playlists quickly. "rain on me" is doing quite a bit better, but it too seems to be slowing down in its ascent and could also be dropped prematurely.

as i mentioned above, white radio is currently being hyper-conservative wrt which hits it accepts into heavy rotation, and those that it does accept are likely to stay for a pretty long while. because white radio has spent the past several years largely ignoring streaming charts, it overwhelmingly determines what gets played by passive audience research. new would-be hits like "rain on me" will certainly get their chance, but if they don't light up in this audience testing, they'll get dropped so fast it's like they never existed. (incidentally this was the fate that befell numerous taylor swift singles from her past couple of albums.)

Rain On Me was pretty much inescapable here in the UK

thinking about how if cardigan/august/betty is the "same story in different perspective" trio then how "when i felt like i was an old cardigan under someone's bed, you put me on and said i was your favorite" gets colored by the double meaning, how to put someone on also means to lie to them, so what initially seems like a heartwarming lyric on first listen gets twisted when you hear those next songs. james shows up to the party and puts on the cardigan and hopes it's enough, betty knew she'd come back to him but he chased two girls and lost the one. there is tenderness there but she's also aware of what he's done.

you said the way my blue eyes shined put those georgia stars to shame that night. i said, "that's a lie".

she's in top form all over the album but i think "peace" is kind of the most devastating thing she's ever done

Even beyond the trio, so many of the songs here (in fact almost all of them) are about how time changes perspectives on events and places them in different lights, which really does feel like a strong connection back to “Tim McGraw” via so much of her best work in the interim.

the delivery on "peace" is absolutely stunning.

xp "time, mystical time" yeah

Even beyond the trio, so many of the songs here (in fact almost all of them) are about how time changes perspectives on events and places them in different lights, which really does feel like a strong connection back to “Tim McGraw” via so much of her best work in the interim.

She mastered that right from the get-go. I remember being totally floored by "Fifteen", the way it acknowledged how things feel when you're that age, the way they feel when you look back at them with the passing of time, and the eloquence and precision she had to express it. And she can't have been older than eighteen when she wrote it!

I've only listened to it one time through, but it seemed every song didn't really do anything until about 2/3rds of the way through. I liked some of it pretty well though, especially August and Illicit Affairs.

the thing is while this is a little long i don't really know what i'd cut except maybe "mad woman" which isn't even bad, it just doesn't stand out as much

I’ve listen to three or four times and still haven’t really taken in the last song, I just run out of steam (kind of hard to imagine the version w/“bonus track”). But I’ll get there.

Muttered this on an FB thread today in response to a post from Jody Rosen on "the deftness of her genre hopping" about something I was thinking about earlier today in a similar vein: I was thinking Bowie to an extent but perhaps maybe also Robert Palmer and Linda Ronstadt, both of whom never seem to quite get that same level of appreciation Bowie got on the variety-within-a-pop-context front. Not trying to draw exact comparisons, just that Swift’s career is now long enough and detailed enough that there’s room to place her in that context. (Especially also since, as time progresses and the immediate ‘who is this about’ reaction that seems to linger about many of her songs as they appear fades into the past, everything becomes...more universal? Timeless in a certain way? Others can spell this out more than I.). Alfred followed this up with a good point that her work moves well beyond "autobiographical analysis, the hobbyhorse of journalistic approaches," which strikes me as apt.

Robert Palmer and Linda Ronstadt, both of whom never seem to quite get that same level of appreciation Bowie got on the variety-within-a-pop-context front.

Very simple explanation here; Bowie's magpie-ism registers as "cool"/"arty" to the critic-brain, where Palmer's and Ronstadt's shifts register as "mercenary"/"empty-shell".

Their loss!

she had a marvelous time ruining everything

The proof is irrefuable!

https://media3.giphy.com/media/1447XAXteQjahi/source.gif

https://media3.giphy.com/media/1447XAXteQjahi/source.gif

"exile" is pretty easily my least favorite song here but that bridge is a killer, some peter gabriel/kate bush "don't give up" shit

i don't like the verse in "exile" much at all but that's more than made up by the chorus & especially the bridge

but you know instead of reassuring and life-affirming it's about miscommunication and mutual alienation while still feeling yoked to the memory of an old warmth now lost

... like iirc a lot of the record is xp

salt air
and the rust on your door
i never needed anything more

^^^ love this opening

Your integrity makes me seem small
You paint dreamscapes on the wall

I believe Aaron Dessner when he says what he enjoyed most was the creative partnership, but I wonder at what point in all this he realized, whoa, I’m about to make a shit-ton of money.

I was thinking about that, too. And Justin Vernon, for that matter, who at this point already has several credits with Kanye, Eminem, et al., he must be swimming in it.

So Dessner has never even been in the same room with Swift, right?

so she says

I’m confused by “genre hopping” - all of Taylor Swift’s music seems to exist on a pretty narrow spectrum between pop and country to my ears?

The National guys all have several shit-tons of money already, I doubt the thought really took him aback tbf

Also anyone who is feeling this should join Brad and I in enjoying the last three Vanessa Carlton albums

― Tim F, Saturday, July 25, 2020 1:49 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

oh boy otm

I actually have no sense of how rich "band I've heard of but not Taylor Swift level megastar" makes you. If you're in the National, could you just not work for the rest of your life? It's not *that* rich, is it?

It's like the Chris Rock routine about "rich" vs. "wealthy." The National guys might not even be "rich," but I'm sure they're fine with money. However, I'm willing to bet Dessner potentially makes as much from this album as he's made from the last several National albums and tours combined.

I don't hear any genre hopping with her. I think maybe a better way to put it is how comfortable she's been with at this point a pretty diverse slate of collaborators. That's a testament to her talents (as singer/lyricist) and her personality, which tbh didn't really click with me at all until this album and, in particular, the documentary. She's the through-line but unlike (for example) Bowie or Madonna, she *doesn't * sound like a "musical chameleon," or someone who hops from style to style and image to image. She just sounds like a really sympathetic and sensitive collaborator, attuned to what others are bringing and what she can bring to them.

Playing the most recent National album again. I should play this for my kids to see if they hear any similarities.

I seriously doubt Dessner has a day job, and I'm sure he does just fine, as he works with many many artists and I'm sure he's paid well for it. He's done a few film scores also but nothing huge. "Rich" I'm not sure but he likely has a comfortable life.

A day job?! The National has sold millions of records and did p/ much non-stop touring, selling out huge venues (in Europe at least). They're all millionairs, easily.

Oh sure it’s just that whatever comfortable lifestyle he already has he just got a nice bonus.

Looking at Spotify, just their top 10 songs have had around 400 million streams so I imagine they do ok

Lol, 400 million streams on Spotify probably gets them a sandwich.

Touring is expensive. It's very easy to come back from a big headlining tour having barely broken even, or even lost money.

• You have to pay the road crew, tour manager, publicist, etc. out of pocket
• Visas, travel expenses, hotels, etc.
• Insurance
• If you're not a headliner, if you're opening for a major touring act or on a festival tour (Warped, Knotfest, Ozzfest when that was a thing, etc.), you have often bought that slot

I'm sure the National do well, because they've managed to make it a sustainable business for quite a long time, and Dessner does other stuff, but if he's more than upper-middle-class I'd be really shocked. Run of the mill doctors and lawyers make more money in a given year than highly successful, highly recognizable musicians.

Run of the mill doctors and lawyers kindergarten teachers make more money in a given year than highly successful, highly recognizable musicians.

Yeah, seriously. Just to underscore costs, Swift's Reputation tour reportedly made $266 million, which is a ton of money, but Swift herself is worth somewhere around $350 million, which means she got paid piles of money, of course, but that the bulk of the tour money probably went to the machine. Assuming any of these numbers are even close to accurate, in 2018 she reportedly earned $5 million in record sales, $2.4 million through streaming, and $2 million in publishing royalties. I bet she makes the most through endorsements and stuff, though.

Anyway, I was curious. One estimate has it that Spotify pays $1 for every 229 streams. So barring some special secret negotiation, 400 million streams likely gets the National a little under $2 million. Divided across the band members, minus costs, and yeah, you're doing well but not buying a private island or anything. But if Swift made $ 2.4 million in total streaming, then the National probably make much, much less than annually.

One estimate has it that Spotify pays $1 for every 229 streams. So barring some special secret negotiation, 400 million streams likely gets the National a little under $2 million.

This isn't the thread for this, but a) that seems way higher than I've read elsewhere, and b) Spotify doesn't pay individual artists for how much their music is streamed. A lot of people are very mad about that fact and have been since the beginning. Spotify takes all the money generated by all the songs that are streamed, throws it in a big pot, and divides it up among all the artists and labels.

Oh I'm sure those numbers are totally wrong. Those streaming services are less than transparent at best, and infamously not generous. Didn't Pharrell say that tens of millions of streams of Happy essentially made him peanuts? Point being that 400 million streams seems like a lot, until you realize it pays fractions of a cent per stream.

Lads. The National are a band who still sell rekkids! Middle-aged people buy their cds and expensive double lp’s. Crazy i know. And yes, touring is expensive, but you’re not telling me a band like that isn’t making good money off those hundreds of thousands 60-90 euros per ticket.

Not that it matters but.. Yeah, I don’t think Dessner will be too surprised with what this gig will pay him.

The National are one of the top five most successful indie bands in USA, they own their own houses. Income primarily comes from plum licenses (in commercials, movies), points on hit records ("Folklore", i.e.) and tour revenue. I'd peg Aaron's take on "Folklore"'s sales/streaming profits, assuming he's making 25%, at an average of 500k a year for the next decade. But: these are musicians in the absolute upper echelon of money-makers. Any lawyer practicing corporate law, real estate law, litigation or claims is gonna be making more per annum than a Dessner

I checked and their delayed Europe tour they had two nights at the O2 Academy Brixton which is 5K capacity

I think ilx never gave a fuck about them so you're underestimating how popular they are and how ardent their fanbase is.

It was really just an offhand thought. Here you are, a member of a successful rock band, puttering around at home during quarantine, making music because that's what you do and you have a lot of time on your hands and you're not even sure what the music's for, and then you get a text message and suddenly it's like, "Oh, that's what this music is for — to buy another couple houses and stage my long-dreamt-of puppet musical on a mountain in Norway."

You're thinking of Phil Elverum

I like Ned's most recent posts-- although I feel as if Taylor kind of hit her "Let's Dance" phase a little early.

Thanks! A little early, maybe, but also I might take relative age and 'career' space into account. (Eight years separate the debut album and 1989, eleven years separate Ziggy Stardust and Let's Dance -- and yes, I know that's not when Bowie started etc. etc. but let's phrase it in terms of the US public eye, and also the difference in how careers work now, as such.)

I mean, in between those glam rock and pop albums, he did soul pastiche, ambient collaborations with Eno, art-rock with Fripp,... Do people really see a remotely comparable scope in Taylor Swift's work? Like crut, I am also baffled by "genre hopping" wrt TS.

The album she did with Wolfgang Voight was admittedly pretty unexpected.

I think "Peace" (on the new album) may have the most "soul" of any song Taylor has done?

(Great song, btw - probably should have ended the album? I still can't get into "Hoax," or ever really hear the melody.)

i see that this thread is gonna get to 1000 comments before i get a chance to listen

Yeah sund4r you're kinda right-- less in common with a Robert Palmer and more in common with "a rock band who had their disco moment". I hope that's the case, anyway! I have no taste for Taylor-the-pop-musician. I like her best when she sounds like Jann Arden

i'm two listens in, + tho i'm enjoying it i'm also not sure if my interest will sustain for much beyond that. it's very nice and a smart/refreshing departure for her, but it is also so ceaselessly subdued in mood that i do struggle to take it all in as an ~album~ at times. the instrumentation is polite and refined, for better and worse, + i enjoy the hypnotic electronic touches. i found myself wishing that the hazy instrumental opening to "epiphany" would just continue uninterrupted for awhile like a stars of the lid record or something but nope, had to jump right back into tay's vocals. unlikely to become my fav ts record, but pretty good!

i enthusiastically welcome her not releasing a tragic, labored attempt at a 'pop hit' prior to dropping the album

have personally been wondering if the subdued mood is a feature and not a bug. i look at what's working on streaming and i don't see a lot of big/bombastic/uptempo/maximalist pop music

i see sad ballads from the pop artists who do manage to fit through the bottleneck and reach the masses, and i see songs that are advance scouts from rap and r&b records that in a lot of ways, resemble folklore more than they resemble reputation or 1989. long, tonally melancholy/subdued, lyrically focused at least compared to the max martin school of "if it sounds good, who cares what it means?"

the single that worked from lover was the title track. the single that worked from reputation was delicate. either of those songs could show up on folklore and fit right in. what if this just is the sound of pop now? what if the smaller, more subtle gradient of moods this record displays from track to track are just more relatable and enticing to a generation of listeners that isn't interested in the traditional sugar rush of bubblegum because they literally have cut actual sugar out of their actual diets and therefore mistrust any product, cultural or otherwise, that's trying to give them too much too soon?

screaming at the thought of this album's tracks getting slotted into the popular 'peaceful piano' 'mood' playlists

sounding more depressed/pensive does not automatically make your music more sophisticated or subtle. imo that this is swift's best album is nothing to do with the (admittedly au courant) glumness or mood greydient and more to do with the fact that it feels less dead-eyed than usual & she (eventually) starts doing more interesting things with the instrumentals than before. it's reductive to say that pop music itself is becoming less maximalist. pop music is becoming more of everything and you can choose to listen to whatever bits of it you're told to you like

All fair, but this is also her first album in four albums not preceded by a particularly obnoxious, very not subtle lead single. Definitely a choice.

“Shake It Off” wasn’t obnoxious (and neither was “We Are Never...,” if you’re counting back that far). This is veering into “pop is bad” territory!

I mean, different strokes, I guess.

shake it off was foully obnoxious, we are never was iconic, rip terrace house

"we are never" was the last decent one, it was all sharply downhill from there leading to the unmitigated abomination that is "me!"

i assume "look what you made me do" hasn't come up bc it's the best lead single of those three albums and it's great

i fully admit i was not read for the taylor swift heel turn at the time and now i think it's so campy and arch and delightful

i was not ready*

arch(er)

Yeah, whatever you think LWYMMD was, laboured attempted at an obnoxious pop hit doesn’t seem like a good description.

“Shake It Off” and “Me!” are really the only two - in both cases they don’t even seem to fit in with the rest of the album that produced them.

I remember being on a date the first time I heard "Shake it Off" and immediately knowing I'd hear it several hundred more times whether I liked it or not

i still don't think lwymmd was good but it's at least entertaining and the video really helped sell it

"shake it off" isn't bad but also not at all good either. "me!" on the other hand is one of the worst things she's ever done

imo "cardigan" is a bad choice for first single and it would have been a massive error to drop it in advance of the album rather than on the same day

we live in a world where the post-LDR sadcore continuum is producing monster chart hits like "someone you loved", and "cardigan" to me feels just as targeted towards mainstream trends as "me!" felt targeted at pop radio playlists during the era of "high hopes" and the jonas brothers

ah the "look what you made me do" video........ cinema

what would have been a better lead single from it though, "exile"? "cardigan" seems like as good as it gets as far as lead single choices go here

yes it really had to be a choice between two of the worst songs on the album

"cardigan" is great and "exile" at least has a fantastic bridge

Yeah, actually, "We are Never ..." has grown on me.

I really like Exile and I say that as someone who has been deeply allergic to Bon Iver for virtually his entire career. Would love to hear an entire album of duets, in that vein (as opposed to the godawful Brendon Urie vein).

I don't care for that song or like the Bon Iver records much, but he has a good voice and I'm not mad when he shows up in things (eg the Hadestown studio album, Bonny Light Horseman, Yeezus)

surely monsieur iver will be duetting with tay at whichever grammy ceremony this album will be competing in

grammy wouldn't be the same without albums like taylor or bomb ivor in them

bon (h)iver? more like mauvais été, amirite?

c'est vrai

I don't care for that song or like the Bon Iver records much, but he has a good voice and I'm not mad when he shows up in things (eg the Hadestown studio album, Bonny Light Horseman, Yeezus)

― the quar on drugs (Simon H.), Sunday, 26 July 2020 23:31 (yesterday) link

One of the upshots of Hadestown is that I wasn't at all surprised to hear him sing in baritone.

I bet Taylor would just love that album if she heard it.

I still listen to it more than the Broadway cast album tbh. "If It's True", fuck.

that does also make me wonder if she likes/has heard Anais Mitchell actually

Oh yeah it's much better IMO, even if the Broadway cast album adds a lot of good songs. I think there's an interconnection of the personal and the mythical on a lot of the songs ("If It's True" yeah, but also stuff like "Wedding Song" and "Flowers") that really chimes in with some of the songwriting on Folklore - which the duet on "Exile" drives home, but it's not the only example.

Re Anais more generally, songs like "Your Fonder Heart" or "Any Way The Wind Blows" are very Taylor-esque in parts.

Actually the (non-Hadestown) song that really underscores the connection is "Namesake".

I believe Lover and Reputation would've been received much better as albums if she'd released them suddenly and all at once like she has with this one. She bungled the release of those ones with terrible first single choices and cringy marketing campaigns, and this ultimately impacted how they were received as projects. I do think this album is better than both of those, but the fact that it has pretty much forced people to accept it as a complete project helps it. It's interesting, it really does feel like Taylor is really still pulling for the idea of the ALBUM as the ultimate unit of musical consumption when the rest of the music culture feels like it's pulling strongly against it. It seems somewhat conservative or traditional in the present environment, but I like that. I think this album, which feels like a collection of thematically linked short stories to me, is a good example of being able to do things over the course of a record that can't be just done in one song.

Taylor's pretty lucky that official greatest hits compilations are no longer a thing - if she had one it would be a total mess.

This album is as boring as a Bon Iver album.

CTRL+F Paysage D'Hiver

0 results!

Taylor's pretty lucky that official greatest hits compilations are no longer a thing - if she had one it would be a total mess.

Wait that's why I would like it.

Anyway Jill Mapes wrote a positive review for Pitchfork that wasn't 10.0 and so logically she's been trashed by stans for hours.

Yeah it's kinda being discussed in the stan thread

Been through the album a few times now and even though I quite like some of the Dessner tunes, the Antonoff songs (My Tears, Mirrorball, Seven, August, This is Me Trying, Illicit Affairs, Betty) are so much more thrilling, and sure feels like the two could have made something really really special together.

Also, fans have noticed some parallel images with the film Portrait of a Lady on Fire:

Taylor really said “that film has a very sad ending but it’s art, I think I will put references about it” #folklore pic.twitter.com/5Cepig4gWY

— ELIZA(betty) (@YeeHawSwiftie) July 26, 2020

Seven is a Dessner one I think

You're right - was thinking Antonoff did that whole middle block.

I like how “the 1” keeps basically the same repetitive piano figure through the whole song, and the entire melody and structure comes just through the vocal lines. It’s a nice stripped down illustration of her writing style.

and it builds impressively

She loves her crescendos.

working on “taylor swift phrases” pic.twitter.com/hOfK2H0nxY

— Julie Greiner (@JulieAbridged) July 26, 2020

Seven is a Dessner one I think

Ned Fucking Raggett!

ahah

That would have been a great ILX cover project !

wait, which thread is the stan thread?

"peace" sounds like a Bon Iver song

I wonder what brought her to Dessner? And/or what she would have done had he not had a stack of songs and sketches and ideas ready to send her way that she immediately responded to. Related, I wonder how wide a net she cast looking for collaborators and ideas. I assume it couldn't have just been Dessner, there must have been others now bound by NDAs (or maybe slated for future projects?).

This was pretty interesting (if it hasn't been posted yet):

https://www.vulture.com/2020/07/taylor-swift-folklore-aaron-dessner-breaks-down-every-song.html

Then there's all this (intentionally?) mysterious stuff about William Bowery, who gets two credits on the record but maybe contributed more and maybe is a pseudonym. I've seen her boyfriend Joe Alwyn and Harry Styles mentioned as possibilities. I think Harry Styles is a good guess, since he and Swift reportedly worked on some unreleased music in the past, and maybe they went with a pseudonym to get around label conflicts. But who knows.

"william bowery" definitely a harry styles-ass pseudonym

William Bowery is who Harry Styles is when he's on 'shrooms.

Ned Fucking Raggett!

― the quar on drugs (Simon H.), Monday, July 27, 2020 9:50 AM (one hour ago)

ahah

― AlXTC from Paris, Monday, July 27, 2020 9:51 AM (one hour ago)

That would have been a great ILX cover project !

― AlXTC from Paris, Monday, July 27, 2020 9:52 AM (one hour ago)

A vision, it's true.

QED xps

https://exilehaylor.tumblr.com/post/624764980399669248/william-bowery-is-harry-styles

Heh. A lot of that is one step above "Harry Styles is a person, William Bowery is a person, ergo, Harry Styles is William Bowery."

if you rearrange the letters in "william bowery" you get "bowie willamry". harry styles is a known fan of bowie and "williamry" sounds like "william"

there is/was a music critic named William Bowers, right? maybe it's him being lazy with the pseudonymns.

William Bowery = Bill Bowery = Bowery Bill = Bill the Butcher = Daniel Day-Lewis = Paul Thomas Anderson = Aimee Mann

Puzzle solved.

and you guessed it, Aimee "Mann" = noted "man", Harry Styles

if she were a man
then she'd be a Mann

lol

I did think of the character Daniel Day-Lewis played in Gangs of New York tbh.

Ned Fucking Raggett!

― the quar on drugs (Simon H.), Monday, July 27, 2020 11:50 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

YOU WANTED THE BEST - YOU GOT THE BEST!!!

exilehaylor dot tumblr dot com

isn't it just so pretty to think: all along, there was some invisible string tying you to meEEeEEeEEeEEeeeee

meeEEeeEEeeEEeeEEeeeeeeee• to a 16th note pace -- can't notate letters and put them on a staff, unfortunately

OKAY -- I spent my evening re-sequencing the tracklist, and I'm so happy with it that I really am bummed it isn't the actual tracklist you can get on vinyl because it sounds like a bonafide classic to me this way (seriously not trying to pat myself on the back), and it feels so good to fall in love with this music:

1. epiphany
2. mirrorball
3. august
4. invisible string
5. betty
6. the last great american dynasty
7. illicit affairs
8. cardigan
9. hoax
10. seven
11. mad woman
12. exile (ft. Bon Iver)
13. this is me trying
14. my tears ricochet
15. peace
16. the 1

i'm still trying to suss out how i feel about this overall, but it strikes me as a far more honest record than lover, which has some great songs as always but just feels clumsy and distracted as a full body of work. there's some resonant writing on lover but nothing w/ the emotional clarity and power of songs on here like "peace" or "invisible string". i mean compare "invisible string" which has obvious autobiographical elements but is more just a beautiful & broadly applicable song about having a soulmate to "london boy"... lol.

i'm not a fan of the national, and aside from a few bon iver things that whole scene has never really grabbed my attention. in my heart of hearts i still feel like there is better production out there for her -- ok fine i just want her version of 'the weight of these wings' -- but there's some really interesting and surprising textural elements on this record that have never really been present in her collaborations w/ pop producers even dating all the way back, so that's cool. the beginning of the album especially is rewarding as a headphones record.

if we draw a line in the sand after red, i still think reputation is my favorite... i think she really channeled the villainy that has always run alongside her public persona in a powerful way & just came up w/ an awesome pop record save for a few clunkers. but this is a good pivot for her and really has some knockout songs. i think there's a pastoral element -- that final third of 1989, LDR-ness about it -- that keeps me at a bit of a distance. but this is a better path for her to follow than working w/ frank dukes & louis bell. she isn't going to win at the pop game right now and as the initial response to this record on streaming shows, doesn't even need to.

ok fine i just want her version of 'the weight of these wings'

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, July 28, 2020 3:05 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This would be fun, though hard for me to imagine her doing something as ragged as "Ugly Lights" or as classic as "To Learn Her." I'd love to see her do something more akin to Golden Hour.

would love to hear the song taylor swift writes after dropping acid

i'm still trying to suss out how i feel about this overall, but it strikes me as a far more honest record than lover, which has some great songs as always but just feels clumsy and distracted as a full body of work. there's some resonant writing on lover but nothing w/ the emotional clarity and power of songs on here like "peace" or "invisible string". i mean compare "invisible string" which has obvious autobiographical elements but is more just a beautiful & broadly applicable song about having a soulmate to "london boy"... lol.

i'm not a fan of the national, and aside from a few bon iver things that whole scene has never really grabbed my attention. in my heart of hearts i still feel like there is better production out there for her -- ok fine i just want her version of 'the weight of these wings' -- but there's some really interesting and surprising textural elements on this record that have never really been present in her collaborations w/ pop producers even dating all the way back, so that's cool. the beginning of the album especially is rewarding as a headphones record.

if we draw a line in the sand after red, i still think reputation is my favorite... i think she really channeled the villainy that has always run alongside her public persona in a powerful way & just came up w/ an awesome pop record save for a few clunkers. but this is a good pivot for her and really has some knockout songs. i think there's a pastoral element -- that final third of 1989, LDR-ness about it -- that keeps me at a bit of a distance. but this is a better path for her to follow than working w/ frank dukes & louis bell. she isn't going to win at the pop game right now and as the initial response to this record on streaming shows, doesn't even need to.

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, July 28, 2020 4:05 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Fully agree

this might be the record that gets me into taylor swift. wish i could still buy new cds lol

I really liked Bon Iver's first album but found everything else he's done pleasant but slightly unmemorable; like, I really enjoyed listening to the last album of his, but can't recall a single song. But I like his contribution here a lot and I like that song, though, someone I know pointed out something about about the lyrics that made me think 'yeah, this is kind of an unsettling metaphor right now'. I'm assuming TS knows that and this is an attempt to turn nationalist tropes on their head, but singing about homeland is always a bit dicey.

There isn't a single album which wouldn't be improved by a couple of omissions, this one no exception; but I like Lover as much as the best songs on this one.

i should go back and relisten to that album; I think I gave it one shot and something annoyed me and I never went back.

"Cruel Summer" is top ten Taylor in my caon

*canon

"Cruel Summer" is the real keeper for me from Lover, if I'm just playing one song from it.

I like the live versions of "London Boy" I've heard (thinking especially of the BBC Live Lounge version) but I skip the album version.

There isn't a single album which wouldn't be improved by a couple of omissions, this one no exception; but I like Lover as much as the best songs on this one.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, July 28, 2020 11:33 AM (fifty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The s/t is pretty tight, no?

my favorite song on this album is “peace” because it sounds like frank ocean “solo” and i’m not ashamed of that fact at all

xpc
urious if Alfred was talking just about TS or in general there

lol

my favorite song at the moment is "august" -- it's "oh my god I can't believe music can be this impossibly beautiful and perfect" to me

I think "Exile" is awesome. Would I like other Bon Iver stuff(?)

"Exile" makes me wish Vernon had just sung in his lower register his whole career, maybe I would've had another artist I like for the past decade.

yeah you'd probably like his albums; try the "For Emma" or the s/t

cool, I'll give it a shot

"Exile" makes me wish Vernon had just sung in his lower register his whole career, maybe I would've had another artist I like for the past decade.

Crooked Fingers is hella underrated

this piece made me realize something that should have been obvious, which is that we clearly have a serious deficit of actual queer pop stars

xpost oh i love Bachmann

Taylor Swift’s ‘betty’ is Queer Canon. I Don’t Make the Rules.

this style of headline writing makes me want to die

Millennial Writing Style Is SLAYING X'ers and NO ONE Cares

whenever I find this person who Made The Rules they're going to get a real talking to

yeah that sort of breathless basic fawning is so unseemly

also there are plenty of queer people making great pop, they just don't become stars very often

Taylor Swift’s ‘betty’ is Queer Canon. I Don’t Make the Rules.

Such erudite etymological wordplay.

xp yeah that was an odd comment? Like there's more well-known and out young, queer pop musicians right now than maybe any other time in history? Lil Nas X, King Princess, Troye Sivan, Frank Ocean, Hayley Kiyoko all come to mind without a google search. Not suggesting that's cause for a "yay, systemic pop homophobia is over" but the arguable issue in swift's case is moreso that - same as it ever was - it's chic for straight presenting artists to co-opt queer culture/sensibilities... but i haven't heard the album yet so i dunno if that's what she's even doing.

chic and if you'll permit a slice of trenchant social commentary, lucrative

but i haven't heard the album yet so i dunno if that's what she's even doing

it's a projection based on the characters being named after blake lively's daughters

i know i prefer to think of the narrative as queer but i'd never insist on it and i guess taylor swift wouldn't either

but the arguable issue in swift's case is moreso that - same as it ever was - it's chic for straight presenting artists to co-opt queer culture/sensibilities... but i haven't heard the album yet so i dunno if that's what she's even doing.

tbc I do not think she is doing this! there are definitely clicks to be gotten by straining to include her in "the queer canon" tho. and I do think if there were more queer pop stars who were anywhere near her popularity level, ppl wouldn't be able to get away with that take. or they'd at least have a rougher go of it.

Sam Smith is another obvious one.

and of course also tbc I should have absolutely no say or influence on what goes in that "canon" I just found this instance funny xp

imo what's really annoying about that headline is not capitalizing "is," which is a verb

a lot of the initial push to read the triptych as a queer, sapphic love story has, in my estimation, come from kaylors who have oriented their lives around the theory that taylor swift is closeted

what's a "kaylor"?

you know maybe it's better if i don't explain that

(stans who believe karlie kloss and taylor swift were romantically involved)

https://www.theringer.com/music/2017/11/9/16625462/taylor-swift-karlie-kloss-kaylor-tumblr-shipping

thanks! figured it was a 'ship, but I have never heard of Kloss before

but also if taylor swift actually wrote a song suite about three women in love, that's totally awesome 2 me

hard to feel co-opted when a great writer is making a high school love triangle feel emotionally vivid and complex to me

I'm assuming TS knows that and this is an attempt to turn nationalist tropes on their head, but singing about homeland is always a bit dicey.

― akm, Tuesday, 28 July 2020 16:32 (yesterday) link

when i listened to this for the first time i definitely assumed it was about her breaking up with america rather than just a dude, and bon iver blurting "so step right out!" was the voice of all the conservatives who turned on her after she starting being vocal about politics. i like the song fine but i like it more this way than just as a "the last time" redux

yesterday the enjambment in the first verse of "seven" really fucked me up

you know maybe it's better if i don't explain that

this is definitely the kind of knowledge that, upon gaining it, wipes something more useful out of your brain

singing about homeland is always a bit dicey.

IMO it’s a better line for the metaphor than any alternative I can think of — “You’re not my country anymore”? My “nation”? Those don’t really work for a relationship (which can actually feel like a “homeland”).

"polycule" would have been more au courant

The clunky metaphor is actually the next line — “You were my town, now I’m in exile...”

“Town” is weak; something like “home” would be better, but she already said “homeland.”

(clunky metaphors are kind of her thing, though)

Whoever annotates the Genius.com entries for Taylor Swift songs has an annoying tendency of flagging lyrics just to point out very slight similarities with lyrics from previous songs of hers (like, literally, a repeated word).

Yeah, I saw some of those notations last night, those drive me nuts.

i feel like i've learned something about myself vis a vis taylor bcuz every time i listen to "invisible string" my mind expects her to say "isn't it just so funny to think / all along there was some invisible string / tying you to me?" instead of "isn't it just so pretty"

'hoax' is so devastating and may have become my favourite taylor swift song. her closers are always sick but this is the first one that's completely devoid of hopefulness or optimism

"you knew it still hurts underneath my scars from when they pulled me apart - but what you did was just as dark" ;_;

“Isn’t it pretty to think” recalls the closing line of The Sun Also Rises, no?

you're right:

Isn't it pretty to think that the sun...also rises?

There isn't a single album which wouldn't be improved by a couple of omissions, this one no exception; but I like Lover as much as the best songs on this one.

I agree with this. High points in Lover are as high as the best tracks here, and the stretch in the middle is as good as folklore or Red. On the other hand, I think folklore comes out on top because even if you could remove a couple tracks here to improve it, I can't find anything that makes you want to skip here; no cringe tracks. And I have nothing against her cringy stuff, I enjoy them the same way I appreciate the most idiotic McCartney stuff; but this album feels stronger without them.

I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but I'm getting some really pleasant R.E.M. vibes here, esp. w/"Illicit affairs" (I'm thinking of the likes of "Half a world away")

I like the way "Illicit Affairs" doesn't resolve, musically or narratively. It goes into the bridge and never comes back.

Has anybody seen the bridge?

someone call phoebe

Bridgers to Babylon

I suspect Swift might be more into "Bridge to Terabithia."

That might be the harshest thing anyone has ever said about Taylor Swift.

I like the album a lot, but JFC she is milking her fans with these staggered merch and single drops. I mean, obviously no one has to buy all of this shit, but I genuinely feel bad for these young stans that are feeling pressured to buy everything to show their support.

I really liked the cardigan ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

this is always the strangest moment of the new Taylor Swift album thread

Bridge to Terabithia was my favorite book in elementary school because I'm never not hovering over the surface of my deep emotions, so I have been feeling deeply validated by this album

Hopefully someday there will be an ILM Taylor tracks poll so I can vote for "invisible string"

I just accidentally closed my mp3 player app while playing invisible string and it was living death.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/taylor-swift-remains-silent-as-fans-doxx-and-harass-music-critic-over-folkore-review

that Tapes n' Tapes album did getba better score

Menomena, too

I assume I'm in a very small club when I say I miss Menomena

Guillemots

I heard what turned out to be Invisible String randomly, really like it a lot! Heard another one I didn't like so I'll stick with just this track for now and try another in a couple of weeks

a couple of mit grads made an algorithm that tells you "if you liked 'Invisible String', listen to 'peace' next"

I didn’t realize that doxxing/harassment was going on. Why doesn’t she say something?

maybe she's upset that two Architecture in Helsinki albums got higher scores

the cardigan demo really highlights the vocal melodies and performance in a nice way. Must have been too dark in that cabin to find the vocal mic's gain slider, though.

also makes the album version's percussion feel like a tortured production choice that takes me out of it a bit now.

maybe she's upset that two Architecture in Helsinki albums got higher scores

...or too busy tracking down Architecture In Helsinki for a collaboration on her next quarantine album.

where's the cardigan demo?

it is a single on spotify, and I assume elsewhere. Called "cabin in candlelight version."

We made an all acoustic, stripped down version of #Cardigan yesterday. Have a listen! https://t.co/sUZyj1WLRp

— Aaron Dessner (@aaron_dessner) July 30, 2020

i think it's just an alternate mix, not the demo. the piano & vocal take sounds the same as the album version, so the only new addition to the mix is the acoustic guitar.

i like the album version's percussion, it adds to the ways it reminds me of tori

ah ok. I googled it while listening and nme.com calls it a demo. I've been lied to.

i've heard "cardigan" on the radio several times now and to my surprise it never sounded out of place

A "remix/mashup" of Mirrorball and This Is Me Trying, tagged as #Shoegaze. Probably closer to Noise Pop due to the blown-out nature of the mix. Pretty cool.

https://soundcloud.com/stpaulattheendoftheworld/mirror-trying-remix-mashup-of-taylor-swift-mirrorball-this-is-me-trying

This album is so precisely my shit. Just killer track after killer track. Giving me a lot of mid-90s lo-fi indie vibes, Scrawl in particular. I don't think she's ever written better melodies or let herself just consistently stretch out like this. And when she has in the past the lyrics have always felt a bit cloying, like overcompensating or showy, and now its just so goddamn seamless. This is now up in competition with any of the classic singer-songwriter albums from the 70s or whatever. I absolutely didn't expect we could ever have chart-topping albums like this ever again.

even the "bad" ones have grown on me

also how tf did the whole conversation about "cardigan" revolve around ldr and not like early fiona apple? (and there's a lot of half-quotes of "wildest dreams" too)

the other comparison that came up apart from ldr wrt "cardigan" was tori amos which i agree with far more

um, Scrawl vibes?! guess I will listen to this after all

hmmm but scrawl were good

I played this a lot those first few days, but haven’t been compelled to revisit it. I guess each album of hers (since Red) has had less staying power for me than the one preceding it.

I very much enjoyed relistening to this tonight although yeah you could cut 3-4 songs easy

I resequenced the album and it made me love it a lot more

there's a natural flow to the songs on this album that isn't the official track listing, and it serves to highlight the songs that make up the album much more

without having to cut any songs if you don't want to -- it's definitely a slow burn of an album

josh post the sequence

here's my sequence! it sounds like a proper adventure through the wilderness with peaks and valleys along the way -- starts out slow and sunny, slowly shifts into sepia and somber, moves through those tones, then eventually finds some clearing at the end.

it may be helpful to view this sequencing in the LP format -- Side A: 1-4; Side B: 5-8; Side C: 9-12; Side D: 13-16

1. epiphany
2. mirrorball
3. august
4. invisible string
5. betty
6. the last great american dynasty
7. illicit affairs
8. cardigan
9. hoax
10. seven
11. mad woman
12. exile (ft. Bon Iver)
13. this is me trying
14. my tears ricochet
15. peace
16. the 1

i guess i shouldn't be surprised that ppl here are driven to resequence the best-sequenced taylor swift record since fearless but... whet?????? "the 1" last???? no way

i mean not to knock the adventure you've created josh, it looks like a fun listen!

yeah there's nothing wrong with the sequence at all and i think her sequencing has usually been kinda dubious at best.

ha no big! we're all just having fun here

guess it's just indicative of how I listen to music

"the 1" last????

You should hear my "Wish" resequence that starts with "End" and ends with "Open." Totally changes your perspective, makes you think! No wonder Robert Smith is struggling with the remaster.

(I can totally imagine resequencing "Folklore." Tbh, I doubt there are many 70 minute, 17-song albums that couldn't be successfully shuffled.)

I should try a resequence, like josh's, because my attention runs out of steam by the last three songs, which I'll probably love should I be more receptive to listening to them carefully

Whoever mentioned Scrawl in this thread, thanks! I don’t hear this album at all but I discovered a band I’d never heard of and immediately like

awesome, Scrawl are great

travel on rider is dope

bonus track "the lakes" is now available to hear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOHcAc3r2kw

not bad but the album is definitely better without it

I woke up with "Mirrorball" and "The 1" in my head, a lovely way to wake up.

"the lakes" is fine but a song that references twitter would strike a false note on the album

No song that alludes to Wordsworth and Coleridge can't be a bad song.

uh lol can be a bad song

i want auroras and sad prose
i want to watch wisteria grow
right over my bare feet
because i haven't moved in years

actually when i heard "the lakes" last month i immediately thought of it as a decoder for the rest of folklore, it sets the intentions

The album's now split into EP-size chunks ("the escapism chapter," "the sleepless nights chapter")?

This is definitely the 2020 album on top of 'recently' in spotify that I just gravitate towards and end up listening to even when I've entered with different intentions

It goes well with anything — brunch, cocktails, late nights. The perfect 2020 lifestyle accessory album, which I mean in a good way.

No song that alludes to Wordsworth and Coleridge can't be a bad song.

uh lol can be a bad song

Agree that Genesis's "The Colony of Slippermen", Rush's "Xanadu", and Iron Maiden's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" are classic.

otm

\m/

I Designed A Taylor Swift Theme Park w/60+ Attractions!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pno5g88MONo

(That was a C&P error, I didn't design this, lol)

taking stannery to a whole new level..... I admire his Virgo mastermind energy

this is the best movie of 2020 — his love of her music is so sweet and sincere

For anyone who care, here is how those aforementioned "EPs" break down:

folklore: the saltbox house chapter
last great american dynasty
august
the 1
seven
peace
betty

folklore: the sleepless nights chapter
exile (feat. Bon Iver)
hoax
my tears ricochet
illicit affairs
this is me trying
mad woman

folklore: the escapism chapter
the lakes
seven
epiphany
cardigan
mirrorball
exile (feat. Bon Iver)

It's weird that "Exile" appears twice? Or maybe not weird, I'm sure there's some logic behind it.

Probably wanted to make it an even 6 for each EP, but only had 17 songs to work with. Also throwing some more streaming change at her buddy Mr. Iver.

Good song to repeat, IMO

("Seven" is also repeated, fwiw)

Listening thru these EPs, I don't feel like the track order is an "improvement" in how they present the songs - I would stick with the album running order.

I missed something ... is this "three EPs" thing something Taylor has put forth? or is it just a fan theory kind of thing?

Seems to be official - they're on the streaming services (as her "latest releases"). I haven't seen them discussed anywhere, but I also haven't looked.

Taylor herself tweeted out these tracklists, so they are official in that sense. Cynically, just a way to keep goosing the streaming numbers now that the album has been out for awhile.

I like the idea of an artist experimenting with alternate presentations of a big batch of songs (the way we in these ILM threads tend to fiddle with the selection / running order of Taylor Swift tracks, for whatever reason).

Not sure these particular re-arrangements really illuminate anything, though...

(But I'm also not focused on the interconnected narratives that supposedly connect some of these songs.)

weird that invisible string doesn't appear on any of those "EP" reworkings. probably my fav song on the record at this point!

Huh, I didn't even notice that was missing. Looks like "seven" is also used twice.

it’s also a way to get “the lakes” on streaming

it's stupid how good this album is

^^^^

FYI, another EP (this one has “Invisible String”):

folklore: the yeah I showed up at your party chapter
betty (Live from the 2020 Academy of Country Music Awards)
the 1
mirrorball
the last great american dynasty
invisible string
cardigan

the live version of “Betty” substitutes “would you tell me to go straight to hell” for “would you tell me I was chickenshit”

I don’t see the rhyme or reason in the overlapping song selections in these “chapters.”

xp sorry - guess the line on the album is “would you tell me to go fuck myself” (don’t know where I got the “chickenshit” thing, lol)

I don’t see the rhyme or reason in the overlapping song selections in these “chapters.”

I say this as a fan of Swift, this album and these chapters - I think it’s as simple as goosing her streaming numbers is all.

I’ve seen at least one other instance of this: Kaash Paige just released an EP that contains four tracks off her recent album (and nothing new).

It's not much different than her releasing special-edition versions at Target or whatever.

Those have bonus tracks... this is just reshuffling the same batch of songs you could listen to a click away on the album. (It must “work,” though.)

(the latest Swift “chapter” notwithstanding, which actually does have a non-album track)

Yeah, I just mean her marketing savvy in general. I feel like she and/or her people have always been really smart about market mechanics, and they've adjusted to them with each release to maximize their returns.

(By smart I partly mean shameless, of course.)

Been getting a lot of questions about the recent sale of my old masters. I hope this clears things up. pic.twitter.com/sscKXp2ibD

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) November 16, 2020

Christ, I'm beginning to think this Scooter guy is kind of an asshole. /sarcasm

"Plenty of surprises in store," get it?

This is too bad, but basically the epitome of the Steve Albini Baffler essay writ large. When there's millions and millions to be had, someone's gonna be the sucker, and it's often the artist.

I mean, Taylor likely made millions and millions when she left Big Machine and signed with UMG

I mean obviously she can do whatever she wants, but spending time and creative energy re-recording her old music basically out of pettiness over a business deal that didn't go her way is lame as hell.

have to say, I agree

I mean obviously she can do whatever she wants, but spending time and creative energy re-recording her old music basically out of pettiness over a business deal that didn't go her way is lame as hell.

― triggercut, Monday, November 16, 2020 7:59 PM (three minutes ago)

what an insane post!

even implicitly taking the side of scooter braun and the private equity firm shamrock holdings in any sort of dispute whatsoever...... could not be me

Honestly, I don't care enough to take sides in a dispute between millionaires. I guess I'm just disappointed in how she continuously chooses to react to things that are legitimate grievances not just for her, but for other artists. Her answer is never to advocate for wider structural reform of the music industry or capitalist society, it's always just to make sure that she, specifically, gets what she wants, and that she looks like the Good Guy always. From my perspective, she's the greatest master of public relations in the history of pop music, and has generated a ridiculous amount of social power from that. It's just a shame she doesn't put that to a use besides making herself look good.

Honestly, I don't care enough to take sides in a dispute between millionaires.

don't lie to us or yourself, c'mon now

the rest of your post is holding her to an impossible standard... i don't see the argument for why it's bad for her to fight to regain ownership of her music. who is the victim here, aside from you, for having to read about taylor swift attempting to position herself as the good guy? the last time we all argued about this the line was that her stans were putting big machine employees in danger bcuz they got one day off of work -- doesn't seem like any of them were assassinated so the other side of this argument will have to come up w/ a new reason as to why taylor swift is a villain for engaging in a publicity battle w/ scooter braun and some private equity firms

the last time we all argued about this the line was that her stans were putting big machine employees in danger bcuz they got one day off of work

lol - you're cold-blooded, dude

Someone should make a Taylor Swift version of that Simpsons meme of weird nerds jumping to taking a bullet for Elon Musk.

I'm not sure that thinking she should advocate for change in the music industry rather than whipping up a frenzy of emotion around her specific case of being fucked over by the music industry is holding her to an impossible standard.

Taylor Swift should own the masters of her music. It's not wrong for her to fight for that. And it's nice for Taylor Swift that she has the time, money, platform and resources to wage such a public campaign about her specific case, but with the way she is approaching it, it really does nothing to change anything for anyone else in the future. Should she be obliged to advocate for change in the music industry? Of course not. It just feels like a wasted opportunity, especially from someone with an enormous profile who purports to Care and in her own words "wants to be on the right side of history".

Her answer is never to advocate for wider structural reform of the music industry or capitalist society, it's always just to make sure that she, specifically, gets what she wants, and that she looks like the Good Guy always.

"Speaking to Variety in January, Swift elaborated: “Well, I do sleep well at night knowing that I’m right, and knowing that in 10 years it will have been a good thing that I spoke about artists’ rights to their art, and that we bring up conversations like: Should record deals maybe be for a shorter term, or how are we really helping artists if we’re not giving them the first right of refusal to purchase their work if they want to?”"

https://variety.com/2020/music/news/scooter-braun-sells-taylor-swift-big-machine-masters-1234832080/

I think it's worse than "a business deal that didn't go her way"

But I also think it's worse than "her stans were putting Big Machine employees in danger bcuz they got one day off of work"

And lastly, the reason why TS doesn't own her masters is because she was offered them, but elected to walk away from negotiations to sign a (probably extremely lucrative) deal with UMG. Albini-rhetoric does not apply here

"Speaking to Variety in January, Swift elaborated: “Well, I do sleep well at night knowing that I’m right, and knowing that in 10 years it will have been a good thing that I spoke about artists’ rights to their art, and that we bring up conversations like: Should record deals maybe be for a shorter term, or how are we really helping artists if we’re not giving them the first right of refusal to purchase their work if they want to?”"

https://variety.com/2020/music/news/scooter-braun-sells-taylor-swift-big-machine-masters-1234832080/

I don't think those questions are the ones that are being centred given how she and her team have communicated with fans and the media in this saga. Her latest post certainly doesn't make those the issues. The question at the centre of all this is: Should TAYLOR SWIFT own her own music instead of some soulless private equity firm? And of course any sane person will answer yes to that.

But I will be pleasantly surprised and happily proven wrong if any of this actually means that anything is going to change for anyone else.

you should try, like, reading news articles before you post

https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/taylor-swift-universal-republic-deal-spotify-758102/

A source close to the matter tells Rolling Stone that Swift’s alignment with UMG chairman/CEO Sir Lucian Grainge’s approach to artist payments — specifically, his interest in offering Spotify equity to artists without withholding any money owed — was instrumental in the singer’s decision to sign a deal with Universal over the other labels. While sources declined to give financial details, citing the still-hypothetical nature of the matter, Swift said in her announcement that the Spotify provision involves “much better terms” than what Sony and Warner offered.

“As part of my new contract with Universal Music Group, I asked that any sale of their Spotify shares result in a distribution of money to their artist, non-recoupable,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post. “They have generously agreed to this, at what they believe will be much better terms than paid out previously by other major labels.” Swift added that the Spotify provision “meant more to me than any other deal point” of the new contract, which also gives her ownership of her masters going forward, and that it’s a sign “we are headed toward positive change for creators — a goal I’m never going to stop trying to help achieve, in whatever ways I can.”

"While sources declined to give financial details"

“They have generously agreed to this, at what they believe will be much better terms than paid out previously by other major labels.”

PR puff pieces aren't news. Absolutely useless information without any specifics as to how that is going to, or has actually helped any artist in a meaningful way.

Every time I try and unpack my thoughts on this it always ends up with "well, this would all be solved if we just shot Scooter Braun into the sun". Anyway:

First off I think it's unreasonable for anyone to expect TS to actually be "on the right side of history"-- she's a businesswoman and her politics are a method of accumulating profit

Second I don't think it can really be understated how shitty that whole Kim/Kanye "we recorded your phone call" situation must've been for TS-- a narrative that got turned into a "white woman's tears" narrative but ffs watch "Famous" again and tell me she doesn't have a right to be pissed/upset, and pissed/upset at Scooter's participation in it

Third it is not "greed" that motivated Scooter Braun to purchase Big Machine, it was abusive control, full-stop-- Taylor's accusations of this being tied to toxic masculinity are otm as far as I'm concerned

Fourth it is ugly to me that Taylor would take to Twitter to sic her rabid fans on Scooter (and, specifically, the head of Big Machine, who seemingly did nothing wrong but prognosticate that TS would be upset about a sale to Scooter; maybe he should've prognosticated? but his decision was surely not malicious) resulting in death threats on them both, and their families and employees

Fifth I believe Scooter et al. when they claim that Taylor is twisting the narrative when she says they're "blocking" her capacity to perform her own songs

Sixth it seems totally reasonably that Scooter would, in light of these tweets, request an non-disparagement agreement of TS-- and totally unreasonable that TS would then publicly characterize this request as something that "assaulters use to silence their accusers"

Seventh I think this "I'm going to re-record the back catalogue" is an obviously empty threat-- Ithaca bought the publishing to these songs, as well as the masters, so Scooter et al. are gonna be controlling and profiting off their usage regardless of what recording is being used. This threat just strikes me as another form of leverage, idk

In short

I don't think TS should be tweeting bullshit about Scooter Braun so that his family or the Big Machine employees get harassed, instead we should collectively be figuring out a way of shooting him into the sun

PR puff pieces aren't news. Absolutely useless information without any specifics as to how that is going to, or has actually helped any artist in a meaningful way.

― triggercut, Monday, November 16, 2020 9:28 PM (seven minutes ago)

any cursory following of her well publicized battles w/ apple & spotify would tell you that she's been more vocal about the relationship between artists and streaming services than any other artist of her stature that i can think of. she fought apple when it started apple music w/ a free trial that affected royalty payments to artists, and kept her music off of spotify for three years over essentially their entire business model. she hasn't triggered a paradigm shift or fallen on her sword on behalf of every other musician, but my takeaway from that is the extent to which even the most powerful musicians in the world are at the mercy of consolidated corporations/platforms when it comes to the distribution of music and the profits from it.

again, she's a complicated figure -- her music is always spon-conned out the ass, she decided to go back on spotify eventually and plays very nice w/ them now. she is no anti-capitalist hero. but to argue that she's never used her power to advocate for the rights of musicians w/ less power is flatly wrong. like, literally, i would advise doing some googling and reading very basic articles like on page 1 of the results page and then circling back to this thread bcuz it's clear that you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to this subject.

Fourth it is ugly to me that Taylor would take to Twitter to sic her rabid fans on Scooter (and, specifically, the head of Big Machine, who seemingly did nothing wrong but prognosticate that TS would be upset about a sale to Scooter; maybe he should've prognosticated? but his decision was surely not malicious) resulting in death threats on them both, and their families and employees

the idea that scooter braun should be spared the wrath of stans is really funny to me. the entirety of his wealth is based upon cultivating an insanely rabid stan base around justin bieber and then milking that to the point of justin bieber having mental breakdowns on stage. if there's anyone on earth who can't complain about the other side of the coin, it's him.

Maybe she should tell her fanbase to stop using Spotify, tbh

Sorry, that followed a thought that I didn't actually type:

she's been more vocal about the relationship between artists and streaming services than any other artist of her stature that i can think of.

Yes, this is true, because there are so few (if any) other artists of her stature. Claiming she's been "fighting" Spotify (compared to how the indie community is screaming about it) is kinda disingenuous. I like her music a lot! but she's not my friend

the idea that scooter braun should be spared the wrath of stans is really funny to me.

and the Big Machine staffers who got a fun “day off”? and the Pitchfork writer who received death threats that were reported in the press, but never (please correct me if I’m wrong, I would like to be wrong here) addressed by Taylor (whereas other artists speak out & cool down their stanbase when it comes even to more standard-issue hashtag campaigning and online harassment)?

I’m a fan of her music, but her willingness to weaponize stans and overlook or even encourage the perception of real-life danger – especially after experiencing such threats herself – makes me think she is not a cool person. (The Soros boogeyman stuff was pretty weird too, tbh)

any cursory following of her well publicized battles w/ apple & spotify would tell you that she's been more vocal about the relationship between artists and streaming services than any other artist of her stature that i can think of. she fought apple when it started apple music w/ a free trial that affected royalty payments to artists, and kept her music off of spotify for three years over essentially their entire business model.

Happy to see any articles from other less powerful artists who have come out and said that the actions of Taylor Swift have made an actual material impact on the amount of control they have over their music, or over the amount of money that they earn.